Planetary Linguistics Facts

Planetary Linguistics

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Names of the Planets

English is generally recognized as the international language for professional astronomy. However, the various languages often also have their own words which are used in everyday speech.

Notes:

1. For brevity’s sake I’ve omitted the articles commonly used in some languages.
2. The Mandarin and Cantonese words mean (approximately): “The Brightest; Star of Water; Star of Gold; Sphere of Ground (Earth); Sphere of Moon, Star of Fire; Star of Wood; Star of Soil (Dirt); Star of the King of Heaven; Star of the King of the Ocean; Star of the King of Hell”. The Korean, Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese lines are pronunciations. Note too, that since Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were discovered relatively recently, their names are just translations of the Western names.
3. Japanese and Korean use simple native words for “Moon” (“tsuki” “dal”) but all the other planetary names in these two languages were imported from Chinese and have exactly the same meaning as explained for Mandarin and Cantonese.
4. The Chinese characters at the top of the page are the names of the solar system bodies in the same order as the table. The second set of characters at the top of the page is Hindi. To the right is Arabic script.
5. The apostrophe character in the Latvian line is a diacritical mark for a long vowel, which is a straight line over the letter.
6. I have been informed that Thai has many scientific and theologic terms taken from sanscrit. But the way it pronounced is far from the original. If one read names given above hardly anybody Thai would recognize them. Here is a more phonetical presentation of Thai celestial bodies:
   • Sun = (1) suriya (mythological); (2) pra-atit (high language); (3) tawan (coloqual)
   • Mercury = [dau]-put
   • Venus = [dau-pra]-suk
   • Earth = lok (also “world”)
   • Moon = [pra]-jan
   • Mars = [dau]-angkan
   • Jupiter = [dau]-parihat-bodi
   • Saturn = [dau]-sau
   • Uranus = [dau]-marita-yu
   • Neptune = [dau]-ket
   • Pluto = no native term, English used”Dau” or “dao” literally means “star”. Need to add before name of the planet, beacuse those names also used for days of the week (dau-sau=Saturn, wan-sau=Saturday, wan=day). “Pra” – is used for nominate a God (great, holy). Used for Sun and Moon as they are obviously not “dau” (stars).
7. Much of this was taken from the ASTROLANGUAGE mini dictionary of 300 astronomical terms compiled by Veikko Makela. The remainder was compiled from emails I’ve received from various folks around the world. Thank you all!
8. Special thanks to Sam Giloi who sent me the words in Alemannisch, Ligurian, Franco-Provençal, Scottish Gaelic, Yiddish, Nahuatl, Venetian, Limburgish, Jerriais, Kolsch, West Frisian, Walloon, Sicilian, Scots, Lithuanian, Samogitian, Low German, Luxembourgish, Maori, Faroese, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Sesotho, Sepedi, Tswana, and Klingon!
9. See Peter Blinn’s Planetary Gazetteer for more
10. I would appreciate any additions or corrections to this table.

Adjectives

The English adjectives relating to the planets do not always derive simply from the noun forms:

Days of the Week

The seven-day system we use is based on the ancient astrological notion that the seven known celestial bodies influence what happens on Earth and that each of these celestial bodies controls the first hour of the day named after it. This system was brought into Hellenistic Egypt from Mesopotamia, where astrology had been practiced for millennia and where seven had always been a propitious number. In A.D. 321 the Emperor Constantine the Great grafted this astrological system onto the Roman calendar, made the first day of this new week a day of rest and worship for all, and imposed the following sequence and names to the days of the week. This new Roman system was adopted with modifications throughout most of western Europe: in the Germanic languages, such as Old English, the names of four of the Roman gods were converted into those of the corresponding Germanic gods:

The Latin names for the weekdays survive in the modern Romance languages (though the weekend day names have been altered). Also, Japanese words for the days of the week also correspond indirectly to the same planets.

However, Prof. Neves of Universidade Nova de Lisboa informs me that there are remarkable exceptions: at least in Hebrew, in Greek, in Arabic, and in Portuguese (and in languages that were informed by those, like the Timorese Tetum), the days of the week are numbered. Sunday is number one (or day of the Lord in Portuguese – Domingo- and in Greek -Kiriaki). Friday is number six (except in Arabic, which calls it Day of the Gatthering) and all 4 languages call Sabbath (Sabado,as-Sabt, etc) to Saturday.

Months

Two of the English month names are also have planetary connections: January is named for Janus and March is named for Mars.

More origins from mythology:

• days
• months